Trainee Spotlight: Yohan Min, Recipient of the Best Poster Award of the CSDE Winter 2020 Trainees’ CSDE Lightning Talks and Poster Session
Posted: 3/21/2020 (CSDE Research)
Climate change has led to the development of new clean energy technologies. As more cars, heating systems, and other types of equipment are produced that require the new technologies, an uneven distribution of the clean energy systems in the 21st Century could create a solar and electrical divide, similar to the digital divide, with implications for greater inequality in air quality, health, and other quality of life dimensions across communities. CSDE Trainee Yohan Min studies social equity issues in access to clean energy technologies. His research reveals critical social equity issues that will likely grow over time as climate change and air quality worsen and the new clean energy technologies become more important. Yohan presented his research on the distribution of electrical vehicle (EV) charges at the CSDE Winter 2020 Trainees’ Lightning Talks and Poster Session. His study, “Social Equity of Clean Energy Policies in Electric-Vehicle Charging”, was one of two posters to receive the award for best poster. This study describes the distribution of EV charges across socioeconomic characteristics of census tracks in Seattle, using data from the American Community Survey. Yohan estimated a Poisson generalized linear model (GLM) that included both an intrinsic auto-regressive (ICAR) component to address spatial autocorrelation and an ordinary random-effects component for non-spatial heterogeneity using the BYM2 method and he estimated Geographically Weighted Regressions. The results show strong influences of economic factors, such as median income and the median value of owner- occupied houses, and residential stability on the prevalence of residential EV charger installations. Yohan’s identifies communities with certain characteristics that have few to no EV charger installations, denying residents the ability to use clean energy technology. This research is a component of Yohan’s dissertation.
Yohan is a Doctoral Student in the College of Built Environments. He received an M.S. in Engineering from Purdue University. He is a Graduate Fellow of the Clean Energy Institute. Generally, his research focuses on resilient and sustainable infrastructure systems in the built environment, specifically renewable energy with respect to social equity in response to the uneven distribution of services in vulnerable communities, and innovative management systems that address environmental externalities, human health, and private investment opportunities. Aside from his interests in social equity and access to is residential solar and electric vehicle power charges, Yohan is working on optimized mixed community solar models for underserved communities, and the impact of EV adoption on the electricity usage rate. Yohan works hard to address the inequalities he studies. He is currently a Science Communication Fellow at Pacific Science Center to support diversity in clean energy education. His applied work is extensive. Most recently, he went to Puerto Rico with a UW clean energy team to install solar panels for vulnerable households. In the past, he has served as an Infrastructure Officer at the UNDP in the Philippines and as an energy consultant for the Global Green Growth Institute in South Korea.
CSDE congratulates Yohan on his accomplishments!